Dr. John Gillespie

Founder & President

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in Japan, Dr. Gillespie is a graduate of the Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan. He majored in Literature and Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and subsequently conducted research for one year each at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the University of Paris in France, and Kyoto University in Japan. He completed his graduate work at Indiana University, earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Culture in 1979. He has taught at the University of the Pacific, Ohio State, Southern Illinois, and St. John’s University, and from 1986 to 1989 served as Director of the Japan Film Center and the Performing Arts Program for the Japan Society in New York. He joined the California-based Clarke Consulting Group in 1989, serving from 1996 to 1999 as the Executive Vice President.

Dr. Gillespie writes frequently on intercultural management and related issues, such as U.S.-Japan trade. His pieces have appeared in the Op-Ed pages of The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, The International Economy, Intersect Japan, Impact 21, and Human Management Review. He has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) Journal, Corporate Control Alert, Training & Development, Global Workforce, U.S. Japan Business News, Inside/Outside Japan, the Japanese magazines Aera and Sapio, and other print media. In addition, he has supplied commentary for the National Public Radio Program “Marketplace.” In Japan, the Oita Broadcasting System has aired his commentary and he has appeared on the NHK (Japanese public television) program “Japan-U.S. Cross-Talk.”

He is the author, with Yōichi Sugiura, of Traditional Japanese Culture and Modern Japan (1993) and A Bilingual Handbook on Japanese Culture (1999; rpt, 2004); with Yōichi Shimakawa, of Introduction to Business English, 2 vols. (2009); and Tips for How to Succeed in a Global Business Context (2014).

Outside the U.S., Dr. Gillespie has worked extensively in East and Southeast Asia—particularly in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong—and in Europe. He has made presentations on trans-Pacific intercultural business issues to such groups as the Asian Business League (ABL), Japan-America Institute of Management Science (JAIMS), American Management Association (AMA), Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations), Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR), American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), Nichibei Exchange, Global Workforce Conference, International Data Group’s (IDG) Global Summit, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), East-West International Trade Conference, Project World, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New York, the Japan-America Society of Indiana, the ORC Worldwide Japan Network, and the Human Resources Planning Society (HRPS).